


When the valley's hushed

by erde



Category: Marvel 1872
Genre: Anachronistic Details, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erde/pseuds/erde
Summary: A quiet, ordinary night in Timely.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Danny Boy, of course. I find that listening to Johnny Cash while working on a 1872 fic works very well to put me in the right mood.

Steve edged closer to the border of the bed, lips pursed as if that were enough to let the quiet remain unbroken. It sure as hell didn't work. The frame creaked in protest like the old thing it was, but since Tony slept on undisturbed, he rose to his feet all in one go and made his way to the basin stand.

He washed his face, not bothering to reach for the cloth that lay nearby. It was a hot night. The droplets slid down his neck and dried before they reached his chest. He took a few steps further and looked out of the window. Beyond the faint thrumming he barely registered these days, there was only silence. No one up to no good. _A sleepy town,_ he thought, and then, _What a wild idea._

Up in the sky, the moon was a perfect pale circle set against the darkness. His own lamplight, as he liked to call it, was painful sometimes, a deep-set ache, a low-grade burn, something heavy. It still wasn't anything he couldn't take. Life in Timely had been rough since the beginning and he owed his life to this contraption. It kept him going, part machine—

 _Wholly human,_ Tony had whispered, reverent fingers tracing his skin as if he couldn't give credit to his eyes, as if he needed to touch to believe. He had looked so young and unburdened all of a sudden, all the shadows gone. The memory made Steve smile.

He had hated the damn thing at first, for sure. It had felt like walking with a sack of stones tied to his neck. It had hurt like hell. The first days he was sure it hadn't been worth it, what with pain making him queasy, angry, exhausted. But he had no one to blame but himself. He had given Tony the go-ahead just before he felt how his life slipped between his fingers.

 _I'm a dead man,_ he had thought as the darkness closed in.

After it was a done deal, the first thing he had done was reaching out for Tony. Steve hadn't opened his eyes yet, hadn't yet seen him, but he knew Tony would be there. He was always there, just across the road, a song easy on his lips, cheeky and jaded and haunted, and Steve would have given everything to hear him again.

_Steve._

His name had sounded so sweet then, coming from him.

He remembered the half-finished inventions strewn around Tony's workshop, mechanical limbs here, a stuttering heart wrought out of iron there. Flashes of terrifying brilliance that had all gone to waste thanks to that damn bottle.

_Trying to save lives, sheriff. But it ain't good. Don't you know? Can't even do that right._

And now he was alive thanks to him.

Later, Tony would tell him he didn't know how he managed. He would spread his hands in front of him, a light tremor coursing through his fingers, eyes blown wide open and an edge to his voice when he said how close he came to _botch things and lose you for good, Steve,_ and Steve would go to his side, always. He would hold those hands and say, _But you didn't. Look at me. You didn't._

They were a little frayed around the edges, perhaps. It came with the territory. They felt the ripples of a broken world lying buried below what they had built. While things were beginning to look up for Timely, they remembered how it used to be. It was the kind of thing that stayed with you to the end.

He came back to bed, lying on his side so that he could look at Tony's sleeping form. Something shifted as it sometimes did—Steve could read it in the twitch in his brow and the way his breathing grew a little more shallow. They called it the witching hour, the time when the ghosts of the past came by unasked for. Here he was, a man who worked miracles and still dreamed of the war, and Steve reached out and ran his fingers through Tony's hair, soothing.

"Stark, it's all right," Steve said, his voice a touch softer than usual. His heart ached. It would have ached even if he had never been shot. "Everything's fine, Tony."

Tony stirred, the slightest of quivers right below Steve's fingertips. "Steve. You—"

"I'm fine. Go back to sleep," he said, following the shape of Tony's eyebrow with his thumb. Tony brushed Steve's chest so very gently; he traced the rim of the contraption as if he wanted to make sure that it was real, and only then did he settle back into the pillows. _Part machine,_ Steve thought to himself. He liked that. It made him his in more ways than one, did it not?

There was a patch of moonlight in Tony's hair that wasn't there before, silver threads beginning to make themselves known. The summer air hung heavy, but Steve still touched his forehead to Tony's and closed his eyes. It was quiet outside, no one up to no good, and Steve smiled at the wonder that it was to grow old together, that they could afford it after all.


End file.
